Entries tagged 'cat:#100DaysToOffload'

A Document-centric Web Entry created on 2024-11-01 (edited 2025-11-27) Authors: steeph (364) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) Search Engines (1) Web Browsers (5) Web Sites (8) World Wide Web (10) Languages used: en (251)

I've been thinking about what exactly it is that is wrong with the WWW and what to do about it. It feels like it became worse over the years. It's easy to make out individual reasons: Walled gardens, ad-centric web sites, bad mass-generated and LLM-generated content at the top of all web searches, the lack of search results from small, personal web sites without an SEO budget or the malicious will to implement all the SEO tricks for the sake of it, egoistic algorithms (that push harmful and hateful content because it makes them feel good). Thinking about how these things became the way they are is sometimes interesting and may help by teaching a lesson. But it doesn't really bring us closer to a solution. I've had a few thoughts about what does, though. It's not as complicated as I make it sound here. It's just that I needed to think about it to be sure what I even want. And that is for the web to be made of documents with hyperlinks. If it is a text document, a searchable database, a set of image, a list of things, an article with pictures and audio samples, a video file that I can download and play, a tree of links to other documents or something similar to those, then it is something for the world wide web. If it is an application, it's not a document for the web. It's impossible to draw an exact line here. But that's the general rule for me now. It's not that web apps shouldn't exist. People make them and people like using them. So that's fine. But that's not what the web was made for and not what I personally want when browsing the web. It's one thing that photo editors, t-shirt designers, CAD software, action games and all those things exist. You can use them or not. But it has become so normal that web sites are huge and require JavaScript to even load that sites started being huge and require JS even though it's not necessary to serve their purpose. And that has become normal, too, by now. A page that in essence should be a simple document often is blown up do be a collection of applications in which

What can you do?

I've came to believe that there is no route to turning the web into the web that resembles my vision of a good web. It's not even just that I don't think that I (together with similar-mimded people) can't obtain the power to force the usage of certain software or to form habits in others. I don't think it would be a sustainable way with a lasting positive effect on the web. That doesn't mean that there aren't ways to bring others to use better alternatives to walled gardens, closed networks, sites with lots of ads and only 10 % content, sites that use dark patterns and search engines of the oligopositic type. You can promote small projects, share links to useful and interesting sites, talk about how you use the web, make it normal to use a search engine that doesn't only find bloated, commercial, SEO optimised sites. You can start your own projects, enrich the market with libre and other non-commercial software, submit pages to search engines with a curated index, create good content for alternative search engines to crawl. In this entry I'd like to talk about what I do to change my own experience of the web to the better, though, not about making the web better for everybody.

What I do for now

I needed to think about web things a lot before I realised how much of my own web experience I can change by making certain choices and how viable it can be to simply not use certain services. It's not a new idea to me. I don't do Windows, I use alternative front-ends to YouTube, I've used various unconventional operating systems on PCs and phones. But in regards to the web I thought that it's not that simple. Web sites are how they are and even nice web sites link to bloated pages with megabytes of unhelpful CSS and megabytes of maliscious JavaScript. If I use a browser that is fast and doesn't do JavaScript, my web experience is worse than it is with Firefox (I prefer LibreWolf, btw). Whenever I tried Dillo, Nersurf or something similar, or when I disabled JavaScript in Firefox, I didn't get along with at least some pages. It doesn't appear to be easy to simply decide to accept that some pages don't work and just go on to the next one. There surely are use cases where this is not acceptable. But for the usual uses - everyday browsing and casual research - that shouldn't be a problem considering I already accept that some pages aren't accessible because I don't want to register with them. In a sense it's my fault that I don't like how the web is today. It's me who keeps visiting web sites that are like that. And I can stop that by doing some simple changes: Disable JavaScript and use a search engine that prefers non-commercial web sites in its search results.

Really? That simple?

Don't get me wrong: I doesn't feel like an improvement to disable JavaScript entirely. There are browser extensions that let you control which pages are allowed to serve scripts and which scripts you want to execute. I've tried that, but it's complicated to get it right and frustrating because you always have to configure stuff while browsing and that never stops. But maybe it is an improvement despite not feeling like one at first. I mean, quitting to take drugs to which your brain has developed a strong chemical dependency also is often a worse experience than continuing to take them. But also often it's worth getting used to not taking them anymore. It also doesn't seem like an improvement to only use search engines with tiny indexes that rarely return with the ideal search result you hoped for. Maybe this isn't a viable choice. I think there is no search engine of that type with a large enough index to recommend it for daily use. Those projects just aren't there, yet. But that may just be one more reason to use and support them more. And since they do get rid of all the sites that do things that I don't like, it could be an improvement to get used to using them.

What does that mean in practice?

Some web sites don't have any images anymore, some web sites only load ads and recommendations, but not the actual article, modern closed-platform chat apps don't work, just as most other sites that can be called web apps, keyboard focus doesn't start at the main input field, some sites aren't readable because all their styles are missing, burrying the content between or under thousands of things that should have started out hidden or resized, on some sites certain links aren't working anymore, many audio and video players don't work because of attempts to prevent permanent file downloads and there are pretty much no ads. If you use a browser with a less than very popular rendering engine, add misaligned elements on many to almost all web sites, unreadable elements on some sites with unconventional styling and missing elements if they use unusual positioning options. If you only use a search engine that doesn't do commercial sites or whitelists desirable sites, add to that the feeling of trying out the web in 1995 unless you navigate to specific sites that you know contain what you are looking for. The web feels relatively small with a search engine like that. But even then it's huge. Maybe it's a quiestion of what you expect. If you really don't know what site you are looking for, use a universal search engine. If you have an idea where to find the information you are looking for, start at that site. It might be Wikipedia, Slashdot, Toms Hardware, an Invidious instance. The web is totally usable if you don't enter everything in the same search engine as a refrex. I thought it was great at a time where we didn't do that. And for the rest (missing content, non-working sites): Those tend to be the sites that I wanted to filter out in the first place. So the endeavour seems to work as intended.

There are also sites that I would like to read that just happen to use a CSS trick or JavaScript that isn't supported by all browsers. Those are sites that don't pay a lot of attention to accessability design guides but don't have any bad intentions. I've made sites like this myself before. This article is being posted to sites that fall in this category if you will. Feel free to contact makers of those sites to let them know that you would appreciate being able to read the pages. I know I should test a site in text browsers before publishing them. I never do. Nowadays I don't even test in any other browser than the main one that I'm using (except when using engine-specific style rules). We came to accept that it just looks the same in all browsers. That is something that web designers always wished for. And when Microsoft's browsers improved in this regard it felt like we were there. But it is also true that most users of the web use a browser with one of two/three engines (depends on where you make the cut and call it a new engine after a fork). I think it does still make sense to test a web site in different browser engines. It doesn't have to look great in a text browser (although that would be the best), but maybe Dillo and NetSurf. If you cover those two, you cover pretty much everybody and you don't even have to test the site in Firefox or Chromium.

So, what did I change? For work: Nothing. Corporate dictates what software I use for what. On my private laptop, I currently use NetSurf as my main web browser. I use LibreWolf for two purposes: Copying individual bookmarks or URLs from open tabs, and going to sites that don't work in NetSurf when I don't have the time to find an alternative solution. For chat apps I use their "native apps" although I suspect that they are all just the web apps shipped with their own browser. For social media I'm trying out different Mastodon/fediverse clients for Linux, which I wanted to do for a while anyway. For search I'm currently using various Searx/SearXNG instances. (I know, not that alternative. I don't want to ruin everything at once for me.) More than recently I deliberately navigate to a specific site instead of using a search engine and ending up on a site that I already knew. When looking for something on eBay, I don't find as many interesting things like before because the pictures are missing and I don't needlessly buy things as much now. When searching for some random information or doing some curiosity research I close many search results directly or very soom after opening them because they aren't displayed properly. So far that doesn't bother me much. I'm already used to having to close tabs again right away because of cookie banners and other popups that make it impossible to get to the content without finishing a maze and reading a bunch of things for at least a minute. Now I open and close more search results, but get my ansers anyway. On video platforms, I open the video in an external player. It's nicer to have the player of my choice with my prefered UI and my custom configuration anyway. Some sites simulaniously look worse and better at the same time. I may have to scroll a bit to the content and it is obvious that the page wasn't designed to look exactly like that. But at least I don't get any grafical animations, lots of side-loaded unrelated content or ads. For shopping my options are very narrow. I already stopped using Amazon for other reasons a while ago. It's really not as much of a hassle as people seem to think. But much more shops than I expected rely on JavaScript for purchasing or logging in nowadays. (Probably at least for a CAPTHA.) It's pretty much all, actually. According to my rule from earlier, those are apps though, and there would be better ways to implement those. So, I don't have a solution other than switching back to LibreWolf or an app on my phone when I need to buy something online. So far, I didn't actually need anything, though. For online banking, sending a message to my insurance, using the Wayback machine and I predict much more, it is the same. For some things I will try to find alternatives. For others I will realise I don't have to. For some sites that I want to consume for enternainment it's disappointing when they don't work. There are so many alternaives for entertainment in all categories. I have so many ebooks, web books, audio books, lecture recordings, podcasts, … that I would like to consume when I get the time and energy to, I really don't need whatever interesting thing I've just found or somebody has just recommended. But now that I know it's there, I don't want to miss out. So far, this has been largest part of my negative experience after switching. But I haven't been at it for long. I'm curious to see how this will go for me.

Edited in November 2025 (one year later) to add: This endeaver has not worked out for long. More and more I switched bach to LibreWolf and more and more I felt I had to use a site without wanting to look for alternatives. I also completely gave up using alternative search engines and when I started using a new PC I didn't even install any other browser than LibreWolf. I made several attempts at getting used at some of the aspects of a less complex and less commercial web experience. But it didn't stick, for the reasons you may have expected and not done the same experiment yourself. But there will be more attempts from me to get used to search engines with less commercial results. And I did get used to some things. Apart from exclusively using alternative Youube frontends and sometimes trying small search engines first, I more often in the past visit blogs, aggregators or web directories for browsing instead of social media feeds. And that is a great thing to get used to, I think.

Comment via email

A Really Very Good Laptop Entry created on 2024-09-04 (edited 2025-01-07) Authors: steeph (364) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) Computers (19) Laptops (2) ThinkPads (2) Languages used: en (251)

This is a continuation of my recent entry about what I think makes a good laptop.

Display And Keyboard Size

I used to think a larger screen would be better, because you could see things better. But when sitting directly in front of the thing, it doesn't really make a difference whether the screen is 12 or 15 inches across. Larger screens tend to be available with higher resolutions. I think my preference for 15 inch laptops come from a time where there was a notable difference in price between laptops with screens with hardly acceptable and good resolution. But I've come to accept smaller-than-HD resolutions even though there are tasks where it really makes a difference. But with 15 year-old laptops, an HD screen doesn't have to make the thing much more expensive. So there are options, even with 12 inch devices.

The other thing is the keyboard (again). A larger device has more room for a more comfortable keyboard. HP makes use of the extra room. Dell didn't, at the time the laptops I'm interested in were made. In mobile workstations with a 15.6 inch screen can have a numblock, a 14 inch one can be less crowded (no half-size keys, spaced out special keys, extra rows). EliteBooks used to do a good job at that up until the 3rd generation. 12.1 inch Thinkpads (or the newer 12.5 inch ones) are a good example for crowded laptop keyboards. Not a bad keyboard. But there just isn't enough space to include and position all the keys one might want to have where one might want to ghave them. The thing is: 14 and 15 inch ThinkPads and Latitudes use the same keyboard layouts as their 12 inch counterparts. That's another plus for EliteBooks if you want a larger than 12 inch device.

So, since I'm on the ThinkPad bandwagon right now, and somebody gave me a ThinkPad X201 from their scrap box, I think that might be what I'm going to use next. I wouldn't have considered a 12 inch device. But, internals aside, it's just as nice to use as a T400, but ligher and taking up less space. I think if I had been introduced to ThinkPads through an X201, X200 or similar, I would have understood the hype much quicker. I will not go much into other manufacturer's counterparts to the ThinkPad X2xx series. But it is worth mentioning that both HP and Dell had similar devices to the X200/X201 both in clamshell and convertable/talet versions and their keyboards aren't worse. The Dell XP2 has a little fan in me. But those might be a topics for another entry.

Old Case With New Organs, Frankenpads

I don't have anything agains newer hardware. I'm just not ready to give up on laptop keyboards that feel nice to use. The trend of thinner laptops with larger batteries in recent years has been made possible by smaller mainboards with highly integrated CPUs or SoCs. I imagine that the size of modern laptop keyboards is very helpful if one would decide to build a newer PC into an old laptop case. The X201 doesn't seem to be popular for this anymore. Most people seem to preferr newer models for some reason. I would have thought that is one of the most popular devices for Frankenpads, even if it's a bit more work. The keyboard is of the old style, small case still with a lid latch, but there already was an option for a track pad. I have not gathered too much information about doing this myself. But there seems to be enough resources and support in forums to make it a doable project. But you don't even have to. There is a commercial offer for X201s with 10th generation Core i CPU.

I did think about getting a 486 laptop with a really nice keyboard and mod a newer board into that. It would be a nice project. But not as practical as an X201 or similar. After all, the case would be much thicker. Most 486 laptops were about twice as thick. That would make it easier to fit a different board into it and position connectors in the right spots. Most designs wouldn't have room for a trackpad. The availability of replacement parts for ThinkPads is also a good reason to use a ThinkPad for this. But it would be a nice project. Maybe even with an ultraportable electronic typewriter. But for a laptop to buy, the X2100 is the best compromise for many reasons; and you can get it readily built by someone with experience in doing exactly that.

Edit: Shortly after linking to www.xyte.ch all its pages except for index were replaced by their last archived versions of the wayback machine. So, here is the new link: https://web.archive.org/web/20241112182030/https://www.xyte.ch/shop/x2100-pricing/

Comment via email

Schrottwichteln, Persönliche Adventskalender Entry created on 2024-12-01 Authors: steeph (364) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) Christmas (1) Ideas (6) Presents (1) Languages used: de (88)

Vielleicht wäre es ein netter Brauch - oder ein wohltuendes Spiel - im November einen Adventskalender für jemand anderes zu basteln/zusammen zu stellen. Bestimmt gibt es Adventskalender zu kaufen, die weitaus interessantere Dinge enthalten, als ein Stück Schokolade. Aber das klingt teuer, unpersönlich und nach einer Menge vermeidbarem Abfall. (Wie Überraschungspakete/Wunderboxen/Restsortimente von Amazon oder so.)

Ich mag die Idee des Schrottwichtelns, bei dem eins zuhause unbenutzte Gegenstände beim Wichteln verschenkt anstatt etwas neues zu kaufen. So ist wenigstens kein zusätzlicher Abfall erzeugt worden, wenn das Geschenk nicht zusagt oder nur wenig Verwendung findet, was ohnehin der übliche Ausgang eines verlosten Wichtel-Geschenkes sein dürfte.

Das gleiche Prinzip ließe sich auch auf Adventskalender übertragen. Der streckt den Überraschungseffekt und die Vorfreude über eine längere Zeit. Viele Menschen freuen sich immer, wenn sie Päckchen öffnen können. Über geschenkte um so mehr, auch wenn sie klein sind. Ein persönlich zusammengestellte Adventskalender wäre einer, der mich tatsächlich den Dezember fast täglich versüßen würde, im Gegensatz zu einem, der einfach nur Süßigkeiten enthält.

Ein solcher Kalender kann die Form eines großen Brettes haben, der Schachten oder Türen enthält; er kann aus einzelnen Päckchen bestehen; er kann über mehrere Wochen in Stücken übergeben werden, wenn große Gegenstände dabei sind; er kann hinter jeder Tür einen Zettel enthalten, der den Ort oder die Beschaffungsmethode beschreibt (vllt. sogar als Rätsel); er kann materielle, schriftliche, Verbrauchs- oder virtuelle Dinge enthalten oder als zusammengehörige Teile beinhalten, die zusammen einen größeren Wert ergeben (Bausatz, Geschichte).

In den meisten Haushalten liegen so viele Gegenstände herum, die nur darauf warten endlich weggeworfen zu werden, obwohl sie anderswo vielleicht mehr Verwendung oder Wertschätzung erfahren würden. Beim Schrottwichteln/einer Schrott-Tombola ist oft in den Regeln explizit festgehalten, dass es kein Gegenstand mit materiellem Wert sein muss, der in den Pool geworfen oder verschenkt wird. Oft wird ein Gegenstand schon mehr wertgeschätzt, wenn er ein Geschenk war.

Beispiele für geeignete Gegenstände sind aber auch Anschaffungen, die einfach nicht die verdiente Aufmerksamkeit bekommen, wie Ausrüstung für ein aufgegebenes oder vernachlässigtes Hobby, Retro-Hardware, Kunst, die aus Platzgründen die meiste Zeit verstaut verbringt.

Wenn bekannt ist, wer die Perschenkte Person ist können natürlich viel vesser geeignete Gegenstände ausgewählt werden. In dem Fall können eben auch einzelne Kleinigkeiten, wie ein 50-Pin-SCSI-Flachbandkabel für einen Retro-PC-Fan oder Reststücke Edelstahlblech für einen Heimwerker schon geeignete Geschenke für einen Adventskalender sein.

Genau weiß ich nicht, wieso mir die Idee von individuell erstellten verwichtelten Adventskalendern so gefällt. Mit den obigen Absätzen habe ich mögliche Gründe untersucht. Die Antwort war nicht dabei, Trotzdem bleibe ich dabei, dass sie mal praktisch erprobt werden sollte. (Als ob viele die Zeit dafür hätten.)

Was meint ihr: Ist das was für Vereine, Freundeskreise, Familien?

Comment via email

Blank Keyboard Entry created on 2024-11-23 (edited 2024-11-24) Authors: steeph (364) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) Computer (77) Hardware (16) Keyboards (10) Typing (1) Languages used: en (251)

Some 10 years ago, I picked up a simple USB keyboard from the scrap box of a hackerspace before to see whether it really was broken. It was missing one key, which made me think maybe that's all that's wrong with it. Turns out I can do without the Numlock key and all other keys work perfectly. When I have to press the Numlock key I use a pen. I never had to move another keycap onto it.

My idea when I took this keyboard was to same working tech from being dumped and destroyed and to have a random spare in case I needed a USB keyboard because I only had spare PS/2 and one very cheap and bad 2.4 GHz USB keyboard (if not 800 MHz). But there's something special about it. It's a BLANK keyboard, which seems to be a brand solely marketing keyboards without any markings or labeling on any key. I had heard of them before and thought it's an interesting idea. But I wouldn't have chosen to buy one. At some point I needed a USB keyboard and tried the blank one for a while. Since then I use this keyboard for my desktop PC intentionally, not because I don't have another one. I thought I'd write down my experience in getting used to it and what it did to my typing.

It appears a bit surprising to me now but at my first experience with the Blank keyboard was what I expected at the time. I was using it at an opened laptop with a broken keyboard. And I was very glad to have a labeled reference in front of me. Typing a word or two took ten or twenty times as long because I didn't know what most of the keys were. Well, some are obvious (Return, Escape, Space, etc.). I must have cought a particularly patient time in my life. Because I kept trying to hit the right keys when typing. I also didn't really type long texts on that machine at that time. So it wasn't too much of a dive into label-less typing. There must have been enough moments where I hit the right key first try to motivate me to keep trying and maybe learn to type blindly. When the laptop keyboard had dried sufficiently I was very glad about being able to switch back again. Such a relief. But I chose to go back to the blank one for a while every now and then. There were so many times where I started to type one or half a key to the left or to the right, so I started to produce gibberish, deleted the last few characters, adjusted my hand's alignment a few millimeters and try again. Sometimes (actually still pretty often) it took five or more attempts to hit the right keys. That was how I typed for a long time. When I wanted to type "Foo Bar Baz" I typed something like "Gpp<<<Doo<<<Foo Nar<<ar<<<Nae<<<Nar<<<Bae<<ar Bau<u<u<u<t<t<z", sometimes much longer. That was the period where I was surprised to bring up enough patience to continue. There was pretty much no progress for months.

I'll leave it at that one example. But it was a long time during which I accepted that I often had to type things three or four times. I eventually stopped because I hardly noticed any progress. But when I again needed a USB keyboard and the blank one was the nearest one, I gave it another try. And I was glad about how quickly I got back into it. Now I did notice progress after a few weeks. Maybe the fact that I was off and on that keyboard every other day played a roll in that. That was a couple of months ago. And I am happy to be able to say that I am typing blindly now. Still not without errors. I probably hit a wrong key about a dozon times in this paragraph already. But it's bearable. And I'm not sure how many such mistakes I made before on a labeled keyboard because I never payed that much attention to that. Typing blindly always was something that I always thought of a very nice skill to have but one infinitely far away. Now I look once at the keyboard before I start typing and that's enough. Maybe I wouldn't need to do that on a keyboard with very clear J and F markings. But I doubt it. When I look at the keyboard before starting to type I look for the first key that I want to press, not F or J.

Now that I got that far I will probably continue to get better at hitting the right key at first try more often. Because I noticed that I stopped lookign at other keyboards as well, even with nice large labels or glowing keys. That should give me the necessary training over the next couple of years. Although right now I don't feel like I'm making any progress again.

Comment via email

HelenOS Entry created on 2024-11-23 Authors: steeph (364) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) Computer (77) Operating Systems (23) Software (52) Languages used: en (251)

This entry is referencing the entry 'Alternative Operating Systems'.

HelenOS

One of those operating systems that is used for operating system research here and there. I think that's also what it was made for. The last releast was earlier this year, which makes it seem one of the more actively developed research OSs. With the release there are also prebuilt ISO for a variety of platforms including the usual, Raspberry Pi, other ARM platforms and older PCs.

There are similarities to UNIX-like systems but it is clearly not a POSIX system. Basic utilities are included as well as some basic console and graphical applications and demos. I didn't look for any additional software, yet. I'm not sure if I will use this os much more. But by booting flawlessly without any changes and effort, this is one of the more usable OSs I've tried. So I might. It has network capabilities, a basic GUI and TUI, window manager and its own shell.

The GUI is optional. Most applications run in the console mode as well, which is a TUI that mimics the GUI with its start menu. Which is good to have because the GUI is really slow to the point that the mouse pointer is lagging behind.

On my desktop PC neither a PS/2 nor a USB mouse worked. But the touchpad in my old latitude worked fine, including the second set of mouse buttons that work in almost no OS. Graphics mode worked with the appropriate resolutions automatically. Above that I haven't tested any hardware.

There are screenshots in the official wiki.

Comment via email

Trains Entry created on 2024-11-16 Authors: steeph (364) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) Memes (3) Trains (1) Languages used: en (251)

I have two things to say about trains.

1) The meme of the asdf guy liking trains died too young. It kind of died instantly when no new asdf videos containing the joke got published. So, in a way it never was a living meme. I don't yet accept the fact that people don't know what I'm referring to when I make a reference to the asdf video series whenever somebody publicly announces that they like trains. I will continue to make such references and will probably never again meet somebody who remembers and likes the series.

2) Trains work very reliably in Germany. It's often said that people in Germany like to claim that trains are never punctual and really unreliable in general. It's true that that is a very common thing to hear in Germany. And there are good reasons for that. Many things have gotten worse and look like they're continuing to get worse. In my area it has become a common problem that there is not enough staff to run the system. Regional trains are sometimes substituted for days or weeks with buses driven by people from other countries, usually located in the east to Germany. Sometimes train people get sick and no bus substitution is available at short notice. I had planned a one-day vacation for today. But when I got to the train station a display and clear voice told me that the train will not come. I checked online and learned that no trains will come until the evening. That way disappointing and it would have been very unusual 30 years ago. But if it had happened 30 years ago, I would have waited at least a bit over an hour for the next train, likeky two hours, before going back home. I wouldn't have known that trains will also not come tomorrow until the afternoon. It would have been more frustrating. It is a sign of a change in sentiment that an occurance like this has become an accpeted possibility. (Well, what could you do if you wouldn't accept it?) But I believe the right perspective to take here is that things really are very reliable and more than okay. Given the history of Deutsche Bahn to not invest in necessary infrastructure and saving personell more and more in many places since its privatisation, we should expect things to get worse and worse. (And I do think it is a valid question to ask why the state spends so much money on roads and car subsidies but almost none on rails and trains.) Even if my experience from today would be an everyday one, if every other week there would be a day or two with no trains and you wouldn't know which days, it's still fine. I still get to ride the train either direction almost any day and for a few Euros I get to any of dozens of towns and cities. You could also argue that it is embarrassing that such a rich country as Germany can't make its public transport run reliably every day. But I think we're past that. I already have to walk 45 minutes to the next train station becasue there is no regular bus anymore. In the town I was going to visit I would have walked over an hour to one of my destinations because there are only two buses a day. I would have had to wait over an hour in one transfer because some trains are only scheduled every other hour. All the other connections only run one per hour during most of the day, not at all in the morning and after 8 pm. We've accepted this. We'll accept so much worse. It's great that I get to travel by train so flexibly at all.

Comment via email

Alternative Operating System: Essence Entry created on 2022-03-29 (edited 2024-11-15) Authors: steeph (364) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) Computer (77) Operating Systems (23) Software (52) incomplete (20) Languages used: en (251) Topics: Software → Alternative Operating Systems (18)

This entry is referencing the entry 'Alternative Operating Systems'.

Essence

This is one I'm continuasly disappointed to not have been able yet to get running on real hardware. I like what I've seen. But I can't get it to boot, as do others. I don't know too much about the internals of Essence. But it seems to be relatively far in develpment. There is a sleek GUI with tabbing windows in the look of early Chromoium browsers, which looks very inviting, if only I could get it to even try to boot on any computer. The focus has not been on making the OS actually boot on real hardware so far. And unfortunately there has been no release since 2022 and no update to the code for over a year. So I stopped hoping that it might be working soon. I was looking forward to getting to know a knew OS that doesn't take a Unix-like approach and has nice tabbing windows.

(tba:screenshots)

Other new OSs not for real hardware

While Essence is what I created this entry for because I really hoped to be able to try this GUI on real hardware, I'll use the spacce left by the lack of an experience report to mention a few other PSs that look promising but aren't (yet) made to run on actual hardware.

Munal OS

An experimental operating system fully written in Rust, with a unikernel design, cooperative scheduling and a security model based on WASM sandboxing.

TacOS

My from-scratch OS with its own kernel written in C and assembly

TacOS is a UNIX-like kernel which is able to run DOOM, among various other smaller userspace programs. It has things like a VFS, scheduler, TempFS, devices, context switching, virtual memory management, physical page frame allocation, and a port of Doom. It runs both on real hardware (tested on my laptop) and in the Qemu emulator.

Comment via email

Film: Everything Everywhere All at Once Entry created on 2024-11-14 Authors: steeph (364) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) Fighting (1) Films (21) Matrix (1) Multiverse (1) Rocks (1) Science Fiction (2) Taxes (1) Languages used: en (251) Topics: Films (15)

When I first saw that movie I felt like I had just watched a work in movie history that marks a bifurcation: Before and after the existance of this film. Similarly to Matrix. There's before and after. Before being a world in which such a film does not exist and after a world in which anything produced will be compared to it. On the top of the list of reasons for why I felt that way is probably how unique and unseen many of the ideas of this film have been (to me).

Because of my inability to describe stories of films accurately in few or single sentences, I'll just quote Letterboxd here: "An aging Chinese immigrant is swept up in an insane adventure, where she alone can save what's important to her by connecting with the lives she could have led in other universes."

I still like to see the film as this unique piece of movie history. And I will always praise it for some uncommon and daring choices, well-chosen portrayals of chaos, carelessly genius storytelling and its ability to surprise and entertain me more than any move in years, which now, after decades of watching all movies that sound interesting, itself is an achievement. I don't know what additional impression it has on Asian-Americans. (Apparently some details are easy to relate to for sombody who has grown up as an American with Chinese parents.) I also can't view it from the angle of an immigrant parent. I recognise that there are things to say about this part of the story. I can't with my experience though. But as a science fiction action film alone it has made my day, week and more when I saw it. The contrast between everyday life and science fiction action life probably plays a big role in making the impression of something that I haven't seen before. It is an overall good film. Even the fighting scenes are creative and worth watching. I often either skip parts of fighting scenes or with I has skipped them because it's enough to see who one/how many are down/whether somebody is injured or dead at the end of the scene. Most movie fighting coreography is the same moves in a new order with marginally creative new elements. This is an exception, as Matrix was, and contains some really creative stuff. (Maybe the first fighting scene is still the best in this regard though.) So many things especially the main character experiences and does are unexpected; can't be expected because this multiverse family story has never been told before.

I'm sure for most people the film will go down in history as just another science fiction film. The fact that I got the DVD a few weeks after it's cinema release for 6 €, which is as low as new DVD prices go, I think, suggests that it's not seen as an especially successful movie. I intentionally didn't look up how well it did and what most people think of it. For me it's a genius film for many reasons. And I'm not even a person looking back at my life and thinking about what could have been if I had made different choices. How good must the film be if you can relate to any of it's topics? I feel confirmed in my impression that this film is unlike any other before by the titles listed under "Similar Films" on Letterboxd: Free Guy, Guardians of the Galaxy, Barbie, Matrix

Some may think the crazy travelling-between-worlds stull was too much, because it goes on and on. But I like that. It has enough crazy ideas to not make it boring. One scene that ends in switching between worlds each frame for seconds, made a special impression with me, because it went on for longer than it has to, and then still went on for longer than I thought it might. A few seconds for which you nee 30 new ideas/images/worlds for each second, it was quite long. When looking at the individual frames I noticed that many are repeated multiple times and others are almost identical (from the same world, so to speak). I'll attach here all the different images from that scene that were shown too short to appreciate them.

File Attachments (77 files)

Comment via email